Entries in Sam Sifton
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After the jump, you’ll find the list of all New York City restaurants currently open, that: (1) Have now, or have ever had, at least one Michelin star; or, (2) Have now, or have ever had, three or four New York Times stars.

For both Michelin and The Times, the list shows the maximum number of stars it has ever had (“Max”), and the current number of stars it has (“Curr.”). In the last two columns, you’ll find the name of the last Times critic who reviewed the restaurant and the date of the review. Click the link on the date to read the review itself.

The two rating systems are correlated. Most of the Michelin 1-star restaurants have two or three Times stars. Most of the Michelin 2-star restaurants have three Times stars. Most of the Michelin 3-star restaurants have four Times stars.

Given this correlation, you can find restaurants where the two systems disagree. For instance, Babbo has three Times stars but zero from Michelin. Danny Brown in Queens has a star from Michelin but has never even been reviewed in The Times.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the New York Times restaurant critic, Pete Wells, likes to give two stars. In seven months on the job, it has become his base rating. Half of his reviews (50%) have been two stars; just 27 percent have received one star:

It wasn’t always this way. Sam Sifton gave one star 44 percent of the time, two stars 33 percent. Eater has a handy distribution of Frank Bruni’s ratings over the course of his tenure. People jokingly called him “Frankie Two-Stars,” due to his fondness for that rating. But he always gave one star more frequently than two. In his final year, he gave one star 45 percent of the time, two stars just 33 percent—about the same as Sifton.

Has there been a sudden upswing in the quality of New York restaurants? I don’t know anyone who thinks so. Wells is just a far easier grader than Sifton or Bruni.

Wells’s reviews are infinitely better than Sifton’s, and his knowledge is superior to Bruni’s. He’s just generous with the stars—or at least, with two of them. (His percentage of three-star reviews is on par with Bruni’s and Sifton’s. He’s filed only one four-star review, Le Bernardin, and I doubt anyone would argue with that.)

In the New York Times star system, one star is supposed to mean “Good.” Wells’s one-star reviews almost never sound good. Although the rating system hasn’t changed, Wells is reviewing as if one star means “Fair.” Sifton, in contrast, wrote quite a few enthusiastic one-star reviews.

At this point, Wells would need to give one star exclusively for several months straight, just to get back to the ratings percentages of the Sifton/Bruni years. But the inflated ratings of his first seven months can’t be reversed. A sudden shift now would confer a boon on all the restaurants that got an extra star they didn’t deserve.

Perhaps it’s the descriptions of the stars that need to change. Readers are conditioned to believe that one star isn’t a compliment. Ryan Sutton of Bloomberg uses the same four-star scale, but in his system, one star means “Fair.” New York magazine claims that one star means “Good,” but its critic, Adam Platt, follows Wells’s de facto system: his one-star places never sound good, either. For an example, see his review of Mission Chinese Food this week.

On crowdsourced review sites like Yelp, a restaurant has to be really terrible to get anything less than three stars. None of the professional critics are that generous; nevertheless, the public perception is that one star is awful. For instance, the Eater.com headline after Platt’s review came out, was: “Adam Platt is Unimpressed by Mission Chinese Food.” Eater’s summary was accurate: Platt didn’t like the place, although he gave it one star, purportedly meaning “Good.”

Since Wells can’t retroactively re-rate seven months worth of restaurants, and the public will never think of one star as “Good,” perhaps The Times just needs to re-define its ratings. Change the definition of one star to “Fair,” and two stars to “Good,” and Wells’s ratings will make sense.

This is a list of New York City restaurants currently open, that:
(1) Have now, or have ever had, at least one Michelin star; or,
(2) Have now, or have ever had, three or four New York Times stars.

For both Michelin and The Times, the list shows the maximum number of stars it has ever had (“Max”), and the current number of stars it has (“Curr.”)

The two rating systems are somewhat correlated. Most restaurants with at least one Michelin star have three NYT stars, or did at one time, and vice versa. Where this is not the case, it could mean that one service or the other has over- or under-rated the restaurant.

Unlike The Times, the Michelin ratings are anonymous (you don’t know who came up with them) and are published without explanation. But the Michelin ratings are updated annually, and are often reflect changes (for good or bad) that The Times fails to react to.

So you could think of this list as the set of restaurants that are plausible candidates for three or four NYT stars, or were at one time, whether or not they are now.

The tenure of New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton has ended. As of Monday, he took over as national editor, a position he’d had his eye on for some time. His departure is not a surprise. When Sifton was announced in the job, he already had a foot out the door:

For the record, it is our expectation that this will not be the end of Sam’s career as an editor/manager/entrepreneur/mentor. He has run two departments exceptionally well, and nobody would be surprised to see him running something in the future.

The guy who picked Sifton, former executive editor Bill Keller (who was also responsible for picking Bruni), practically admitted that Sifton hadn’t even applied for the job:

In the weeks since the announcement that Frank Bruni would be hanging up his napkin, we’ve received numerous applications for the job of NYT restaurant critic. We narrowed the list, and then narrowed it some more. We had some really impressive candidates, writers who know their food and have interesting things to say about the way we eat.

Then we threw out the list and drafted Sam Sifton.

Restaurant criticism burns people out, but Sifton had one of the shortest tenures on record. The Eater.com timeline shows just two New York Times critics with shorter stays: John L. Hess for nine months in 1973–74, and Marian Burros for a year in 1983–84. Burros, however, was never billed as a permanent replacement, which leaves Sifton in the dubious company of the now-forgotten Hess.

Here’s hoping Sifton has more enthusiasm for editing than he did for reviewing. I don’t think dummies get to be national editor, but as a critic, he was vacuous, bored, and intellectually lazy. At least half the time, he was more interested in reviewing the guests than the food—more fascinated with their shoes, clothes, hairdos and gadgets, than with what they were eating.

Sifton was a man of simple pleasures, seldom interested in being challenged, seldom engaged thoughtfully on any culinary subject except fishing. His reviews were full of empty adjectives like “delicious,” “terrific,” and “good,” and laden with obscure references to second-rate fiction. He embraced mediocrity, and neither established nor recognized trends.

He didn’t even work very hard. Frank Bruni, may have had no experience reviewing restaurants, but he at least realized he had a lot to learn, and worked his tail off. Here’s a comparison of Bruni’s first two years to Sifton’s:

Starred Reviews. In his first two years, Bruni filed every Wednesday but two (and for those two, Julia Moskin filed in his place). In Sifton’s first two years, he skipped four Wednesdays (and no one replaced him).

Critic’s Notebook. These are the longer “thought pieces” that appear roughly every couple of months In his first two years, Bruni filed 17 of these. Sifton filed 12.

Diner’s Journal. Before the blog came along, Bruni used to file a shorter review (unstarred) on Fridays. He did 80 of these. The closest equivalent in the current system is “Dining Briefs”. Sifton has done 26.

The Blog. That leaves the blog—difficult to quantify, because the NYT search engine can’t filter out blog posts specifically. Bruni often used the blog to write about restaurants he wasn’t going to review, whereas Sifton almost never did. Bruni generally filed at least 1–2 substantive blog posts per week, while Sifton’s average is near zero. (A short post linking to that week’s newspaper review is not substantive.) In lieu of writing about restaurants, Sifton posted near-useless “Hey, Mr. Critic!” Q&A pieces every so often.

If you don’t care for the numerical approach, just read Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema’s devastating lampoon of Sifton’s laziness or Josh Ozersky’s takedown in Time. These are notable, because critics seldom attack one of their own, whatever their private opinions may be. Why The Times was willing to pay Sifton to do so little work is utterly beyond me.

Industry people I spoke with found Sifton unimpressive. His predecessor, Frank Bruni, came in with a thin resume, but at least he worked hard, wrote well, took the job seriously, and established a clear voice that readers could relate to. Sifton treated it like a two-year vacation.

Fortunately, The Times needed a new national editor, so after two years we are done with him, and he is done with us. Sifton gets an early out from a job he never wanted, and management gets another chance to find someone competent to write restaurant reviews.

If this seems harsh, I offer no apology. There is no other critical discipline at The Times that is treated like a hobby—a mid-career sabbatical before moving on to greener pastures. In books, architecture, theater, film, music, and other fields, the paper has critics who’ve honed their craft for years—decades, even. Whether or not you agree with them, at least you’ve got someone dedicated to his craft.

For restaurants, The Times first gave us a dabbler who had never been to a Michelin-starred restaurant in his life, outside of Italy, before being appointed restaurant critic. And then it gave us someone who had his eye on management, and coasted along while he waited for a better job to open up.

Sam Sifton was New York Times restaurant critic for two years. How did his ratings stack up?

The table below shows every restaurant review that Sifton filed, Sifton’s rating, and what New York Journal considers to be the “correct” rating. Those Sifton over-rated are highlighted in red; those he under-rated are highlighted in green.

The correct rating, although clearly not scientific, was determined via a consensus of sources I trust. In a number of cases, it is different than the rating I myself gave the restaurant when I visited. Where there isn’t much critical opinion, I generally gave Sifton the benefit of the doubt. If you disagree, I am happy to refund your money. Oops! I forgot; you didn’t pay to read this. Forget the refund, then. But feel free, to weigh in (with civility) in the comments.

Sifton filed a number of reviews for no apparent reason — that is, where there was no news story or precedent that suggested the restaurant needed to be reviewed (or re-reviewed). Those are labeled “WTF?” in the right-most column. Note that this is a quite different issue than whether he rated the restaurant correctly. (N.B. I am not saying that none of the restaurants labeled “WTF?” should have been reviewed, which is a more nuanced question. I am merely pointing out that these are the ones he didn’t have to review.)

At the bottom of every New York Times restaurant review is this blurb, essentially unchanged for many years:

Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.

The paper never explains exactly how price is “taken into consideration.” Presumably, it means that a restaurant could receive a bonus star for being an exceptionally good value, or be docked a star for being too expensive.

I’d like to challenge that. Should the rating be price-sensitive? I can state at least four good reasons why not.

Now, I do realize that anything can change at a restaurant. But a talented chef is probably going to stay talented; an attractive dining room is probably going to remain that way. Prices, on the other hand, are merely the function of what a manager types into a word processor.

2. It Depends on Factors the Critic Can’t See.According to Joe Bastianich (partner with Mario Batali at Del Posto and many other restaurants), food is only 30 percent of the price—the rest being rent, labor, miscellany, and of course profit. The critic can see the food on the plate. He generally has no idea if the restauranteur got a sweet rent deal that enables him to undersell comparable restaurants. The restaurant might be saddled with union labor, which tacks on added costs. Restaurants that are part of larger empires might have the flexibility to run at a loss for a while, an option that independent outfits don’t have. Restaurants in hotels might be subsidized.

Lower rents, of course, are the reason why the dining scene has flourished in neighborhoods not formerly known for fine dining, like the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Brooklyn. (The same was true twenty-five years ago in Tribeca, but it clearly isn’t now.) But those chefs don’t deserve bonus stars, just because they choose to locate in a low-rent district. Critics review restaurants, not rent deals.

3. It Makes Comparisons Much More Difficult. It is already hard enough to discern whether a pair of two-star restaurants are really comparable, when one four-tiered system needs to accommodate every genre and cuisine. But it only adds to the confusion when there is a mysterious price element in the mix. Is the two-star Torrisi Italian Specialtiesreally punching at the same weight as fellow Italian two-stars Maialino and A Voce Columbus? Or is Torrisi getting a bonus for serving a bounty of pretty good food for just $50? It’s quite a bit less than you would pay at the other two places, but is it actually as good in the absolute sense?

4. Critics Should Evaluate Quality, Full Stop. Think about the other disciplines in which The Times employs critics: music, dance, film, theater, books, fashion, architecture. In no other, does the price of the product figure in the review. A critic gives an informed reaction to the product, independent of its economics. The Times doesn’t give better reviews to plays that open in cheaper off-Broadway houses; it reviews the production, not its price.

I am not suggesting that diners don’t, or shouldn’t, care what the meal costs. Of course we do. But value from the customer’s perspective depends on factors the critic can’t easily assess. For all of the above reasons, I think The Times ratings should be based on quality, full stop. The reviews, of course, would still show price ranges (as they do now). Diners can decide for themselves if the restaurant is “worth it.”

I don’t like it much as a restaurant, but that may hardly matter. Places like Kenmare aren’t really about the food. They’re about who’s there and whether they know you. It’s a big city. That works for some people.

“Not about the food” is a lazy meme often trotted out by foodies, food writers, and food-boardists. The restaurants tagged with that epithet are usually those: A) Where the food isn’t very good; and B) That attract a “scene” (models, celebrities, nightclubbers), consisting of people that are somehow determined not to care what they’re eating.

I’d like to challenge that.

In the first place, I think there are very few places that actually set out to serve “inconsequential” food (Sifton’s word). Joey Campanaro, the named chef at Kenmare, has seven New York Times stars to his credit, including a couple of deuces at places where he is still on duty, the justly acclaimed Little Owl and Market Table. I doubt that they would have hired him if they didn’t want a bit of his pixie dust, and I doubt that he would have signed on if knew the food was doomed to be panned—as it has been.

If Kenmare is serving bad food, it’s not by design. Cooking, like books, plays, albums, paintings, and every other kind of creative endeavour, fails sometimes. But rarely is it because the creators never actually cared whether they succeeded.

A commenter to Sifton’s blog post put Pulino’s in the same category, i.e., “not about the food.” But the same owner’s Minetta Tavern has three Times stars and a Michelin star. It throbs with celebrities and pretty young things. Did Keith McNally intend for Pulino’s to be bad (assuming that’s true)? Of course not!

Now, you might argue that regardless of the owner’s intentions, restaurants can be characterized by what their customers intend. But how, exactly, do you put all of Kenmare’s customers into the same bucket? Surely it has (or had) patrons like me, who had enjoyed Joey Campanaro’s work at other restaurants, and wanted to see if he could perform the same magic in another setting.

Visit Sifton’s review, and at the top of it you’ll find a photo of six young, attractive women sitting at a table with drinks, and no food. The caption says, “Kenmare’s owners say it is not a nightclub, but not everyone is going there to eat.”

The women, no doubt, have less experience than Sifton—in the food department, I mean. But who’s to say that, because they are young and attractive, they do not care if they’re served terrible food. (I am assuming the photographer caught them before the food arrived, not that they didn’t order any.) The Times has no idea whether these women ever returned to Kenmare. It just assumes that because of what they look like, they couldn’t possibly tell a good restaurant from a terrible one.

But Kenmare, a brand spanking new place with a well known chef, has no regulars to fall back on, and the so-called “scene”—those who visit places simply because someone told them to—have a predictable habit of moving on after a few months, or a year at the most. No sensible operator would open such a place intending to serve bad food. That it happens is simply because restaurants fail sometimes.

I wrote a piece last week about New York Times critic Sam Sifton’s repeated use of over-the-top adjectives like terrific, fantastic, perfect, and so forth. (Today’s review had another pair of terrifics.)

My delicious veto started about seven years ago, when my editor at the New York Times, an amazingly talented guy named Sam Sifton, returned a piece I had written for him with one comment. “Never use the word delicious,” he said. “It’s banned in my book. Gimme something more than that.” He was right. Delicious? What a cop out. It’s too easy. He wanted me to work for it, to dig deeper. And I don’t blame him. Now that I teach a food writing class, I’ve borrowed his advice for my students. Last week at our first class, I broke the news to them. “There’s one word I don’t allow in my class and it’s delicious,” I said. They looked alarmed. Why?” They asked. “Because it’s not good enough. I want to know why it’s delicious. Is it the flavors, the textures, the temperature, the contrast of all three? Give me more. Delicious is just lazy.”

If the staff of a two-star restaurant is exceptionally well trained and efficient, then what will Sifton say about four-star Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, or Le Bernardin? They are exceptional. Prime Meats, I am sure, is simply doing the very good job that a two-star restaurant should.

Sam Sifton has superlative diarrhea. He casually throws around words like “terrific,” “fantastic,” “excellent,” and “perfect,” when all he really means is pretty good. There is hardly any review in which he doesn’t use some combination of these superlatives. Several reviews have had multiple terrifics.

There are two problems with this. In the first place, it’s lazy writing. Any word used so often eventually loses its meaning. Don’t tell us it’s terrific. Write a description that sounds terrific. If the service is truly exceptional, give some examples. Now, I’ll admit that I’m guilty of these short-cuts myself. But my work isn’t being sold as a professional product. Someone paid for his writing should do better.

The other problem is that these compliments are highly misleading. If he really encounters “perfection” so often, he’s setting the bar awfully low. I eat out a lot, and I seldom find anything that’s perfect. “Excellent” is a compliment I bestow infrequently. It’s not that I don’t like what I’m eating, only that such high praise should be reserved for the rare exceptions.

The problem is getting worse over time. In his inaugural review of DBGB, his only such error was saying that Daniel Boulud’s kitchens “put out perfectly cooked food.” I like Boulud, but could any sensible person say that his five New York kitchens are perfect? A month later, he panned Aureole, but managed to throw in terrific, terrifically flavorful, extremely good, spectacular, and fantastic.At two-star A Voce Columbus, there were two terrifics, two excellents, a perfect, an astounding, and a fantastic.

Some of his praise is just complete nonsense. Within four weeks of each other, he found “deep” wine lists at both Recette and The Mark. At Fatty ’Cue, he found wagyu beef meltingly tender, a phrase so hackneyed that I’d swear he lifted it from a Yelp review. That review also had incredibly good, awesome, insanely agreeable, excellent, brilliant, and unsettling.

His sex analogies probably deserve a post to themselves. At Pulino’s, the fazzoletti “you go to sleep thinking about, dreaming about, and wake up desiring.” A dish at Colicchio & Sons “tastes of…illicit rides in late-night cabs.” One at The Mark is “like a lover sliding into bed.” One at The Breslin “tastes like a date you don’t want to end.” At Strip House, “trembling good…a sorority girl in her first low-cut blouse.”

But none of these hold a candle to the sea urchin toast at Marea: “It offers exactly the sensation as kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time — a bolt of surprise and pleasure combined. The salt and fat give way to primal sweetness and combine in deeply agreeable ways. The feeling lingers on the tongue and vibrates through the body.”

I had that dish. By all means order it. But trust me on this: kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time is better.

I made a list of all Sifton’s exaggerations—or as many as I could find. You’ll find them after the jump. Some could even be true, but there are clearly far too many of them. Superlative diarrhea indeed.

Let us be clear about this: I would not mind the review if Sifton had thought the food or service wasn’t up-to-snuff. But that’s not the case: he acknowledged that the food was inpeccably prepared, and that the service matched.

Rather, he slammed the restaurant for not hewing to some kind of abstract “this is how we eat now” zeitgeist. I mean, it would be as if the Times music critic slammed the New York Philharmonic for not featuring the latest rock band.

I’m not naive enough to suppose that my shouting reaches the tender eardrums of the Times critic. It is gratifying to find a more influential commentator, like Ozersky, calling bullshit as only he can.